Still Waters
by Kethrielle
Summary: She didn't remember him, but as the memories slowly came back, she could tell something was wrong. He had joined her again so easily, but she couldn't just ignore the feeling that there was something painful lurking beneath his calm acceptance. For everyone else who melts a little whenever Bao-Dur says, "Yes, General?" A Bao-Dur/Fem Lightside Exile story.
1. Chapter 1

She wasn't avoiding him.

Not really.

Not at first.

But as the hours slowly passed, first with work, then with busy-work, her apprehension grew and the necessary awkwardness of that first conversation grew with it.

She knew she needed to apologize; to explain. She'd seen the flash of pain when he assumed she was toying with him for some reason, and then the look of deeper and more enduring pain when he realized she was serious. She didn't remember him.

She didn't remember much from that time, honestly. Oh, she knew what had happened; knew what she'd done and how. That part was burned indelibly into her memory along with the rest of her so-called trial before the Jedi Council. But the details? The people, the sights and sounds of battle, the blaring of the alarm klaxons, the rush of adrenaline firmly suppressed? All of that was lost in the blinding flash of pain that followed the order - her order - and the silent cacophony as that order ripped through the force, and killed millions of mandalorians.

She occasionally thought about the people she'd lead into battle, wondered about them really, since she couldn't recall any specific faces or names. That truly bothered her; men and women who had trusted her, followed her into battle, fought and died on her commands, and she couldn't remember their faces. According to the Jedi Council, she inspired people to follow her, to trust her; how pitiful to repay that trust with forgetfulness. She sometimes spent her quiet meditation time trying to find those memories again.

She had given less time to figuring out what bothered her more - giving the order, or not being able to remember giving it. It was horribly difficult to say, "I didn't have any choice" when she couldn't remember if it was true.

She hadn't - to her current shame - given any time to thinking about who had put the weapon in her hands. How had that nameless, faceless person felt about what they'd created? How had they felt about creating it in the first place? How had that unknown person felt about her decision to use it?

Well, now she knew at least a few of those answers. She had spent one of those not-avoiding-him hours meditating and now, with a face and a voice to push her memory into action, she _did_ remember him. She could infer a few answers from his current occupation and behavior, but not all of them.

She really needed to talk to him. She dreaded it, but she couldn't expect him to stay with all this baggage hanging over them.

Sighing, the woman known as The Exile stood and made her way to where Bao-Dur was patiently putting her ship back together.


	2. Chapter 2

Having made up her mind, the Exile didn't waste any time. She made her way quickly through the ship, but stopped at the entrance to the garage. Bao-Dur stood near the scaffolding in front of the gaping hole in the side of the ship, doing some sort of repair work while talking quietly to the droid that hovered at his elbow. It was his voice which had stopped her determined progress so easily. He was talking too quietly for her to decide whether he was giving the little droid instructions or simply holding a rather one-sided conversation with it, but it didn't matter. The low murmur of his voice triggered a memory.

_There had been a night, near the end of the war, when the middle of the night watch had found her sitting in the empty mess hall. She was reading reports on a datapad and eating something that she didn't pay attention to or taste; she ate only because she knew that Revan would be less than pleased if they lost a battle because one of her generals was incapacitated for such a stupid reason. _

_As she sat there, at a table shoved into a corner with her back to the room, a group of three crew-members came in and helped themselves to meals. They sat at a table not far from hers, and paid her no attention whatsoever. This was unusual enough to draw her attention away from the ever-present reports and set her to eavesdropping._

_She couldn't make out what they were saying - they used the hushed tones of people who were awake when the rest of the world slept - so she reached out with the Force to discover who they were. The nearly instinctive extension of her powers gave her the information that they were techs who had worked past the end of their shift and were only now catching up on their missed meal before heading to their bunks. They were talking about the work they'd just completed; since she understood less than half of what they said, she let the contact fade and just listened to their voices rising and falling._

_Two talked more than the third, but their commonplace conversation held none of the tension of the combat officers she usually dealt with; a pleasant change. She was about to turn back to her meal and reports when the third tech spoke up. His voice was light and smooth; it sparked an immediate emotional reaction in her. His voice, with the slightly unusual pattern of pause and emphasis that clearly indicated someone who wasn't speaking their native language, spoke to her of peace. Of a strength outside her own, and a place where she could rest without worry. His voice reminded her of things that had been absent from her life for so long that she had forgotten to miss them._

_Instead of returning to her reports, she rested her forehead on her hand, closed her eyes, and just let his voice wash over her, a balm for her weary soul._

She walked into the garage, making sure that her footsteps rang slightly on the deck so she didn't startle him. Even though she knew he had heard, he didn't turn or pause in his work. Only when she walked over and stopped near him did he speak.

"Yes, General?"

She firmly repressed the flutter in her stomach that his words caused. "I wanted to apologize. Explain. I didn't mean to hurt you; I didn't mean to forget."

Bao-Dur shrugged and kept his attention focused on his work. "I didn't think you did, General. It's fine. We all cope in our own way. Me, I started a one man war against Czerka Corporation. Not exactly in a position to judge anyone's mental state, am I?"

"It's not like that, Bao-Dur. It wasn't something I did to cope… it was - I don't know. But I do know it hurt you, and I didn't want to do that."

He made a gesture that he probably intended to be a shrug; it looked more like he was hunching his shoulders, though, and he turned away from her when he did it. She wasn't helping matters, she might be making them worse.

She added hopefully, "I've been meditating though, and I've been getting some of my memories back. I remember now."

Another shrug/hunch was his only response. Almost desperately, she spoke again, the words rushing and tumbling over each other.

"I remember when we met. You came to the bridge. There were two officers between us: the chief of engineering and the captain of my flagship. The captain was there as the only officer who could approach a general with a suggestion of such magnitude. I assume he brought the chief engineer along as moral support, maybe to prove he wasn't crazy to suggest such a thing. They took it in turns to explain what you'd created. I was never sure if they'd brought you to answer specific questions, or to bore me with the technical details if I started off on a tangent."

She fell silent, wondering what else to say, and was surprised when he spoke without looking at her.

"I remember that day too. Despite their babbling, you barely even glanced at them, General. You looked at me the whole time. I could see that you understood what I had created, you didn't need their explanations. I had been so sure of myself when I brought the device to the chief engineer, but I had my first doubts about my motives when you looked at me so steadily. You thanked me, even. I was shocked that you could stand to look at me, knowing what I had created."

He had turned slowly while speaking, and lifted his eyes to meet hers for the first time since she had failed to remember him next to the burning shuttle.

"I was grateful, I saw an end to the stalemate. I didn't know what the other costs would be then." She shrugged slightly, pleased enough at the softening of his defensive stance that she missed the shadow that fleetingly darkened his features. "I'm glad you're here, Bao-Dur. Thank you for coming along."

He watched her a moment longer before nodding silently, and turning back to his work.


	3. Chapter 3

The tension was eased, but not gone. Bao-Dur wasn't avoiding her, exactly, and he wasn't ignoring her, exactly, but he didn't seem to have any interest in talk to her. His polite replies and blank silences hurt her more than she wanted to let on, and so as the days went by, she stopped interrupting his work. Since the garage didn't lie in her direct path, she rarely went there.

One evening, after her meditations, she went to the garage to put a new crystal in her lightsaber. Bao-Dur didn't turn around or pause in his work, but as she stood at the workbench, she could feel his attention on her. Part of her wanted to skip over to him immediately, and take any bit of conversation he was willing to share. Another part of her (pride, thinly disguised as decorum) held her at the workbench until her task was finished. Finally, she shut down the lightsaber and made her way calmly across the room.

Bao-Dur didn't turn from his work, but with her newly awakening senses extended, she could feel him bracing himself for whatever he wanted to say. Taking this nervousness into account, she settled herself against the scaffolding to his right, leaning carefully against it facing out into the room. She could seem him in her peripheral vision and was close enough for easy conversation, but from this position he didn't have to look at her directly or even stop working. Breathing slowly, she waited, watching his sense flicker back and forth between uncertainty and determination.

With her Force senses extended and focused on him, she felt his decision seconds before he opened his mouth to dismiss her with some bland platitude. Hoping that she was making the right choice, she jumped in before he could speak.

"Don't you ever sleep?"

She felt his surprise at the question; she wasn't sure if he had expected her to make her usual delicate attempt at conversation, or if he had simply decided she wasn't going to speak since she had been quiet until now. Whatever caused it, the surprise helped push him over the edge and into the conversation he had been trying to decide whether or not to have.

"I dreamt of Malachor. I remember the ships. I remember standing on the bridge with you and watching the destruction of the Republic - watching ships full of soldiers and Jedi burn and die. I remember the look you had when you turned to me. It was the longest you'd ever looked at me. You didn't say anything, just a nod."

Suddenly, she was glad of her careful positioning. He hadn't looked at her, and she couldn't find the courage to look at him. She remembered the moment he recalled; it had all felt so futile but even then she had known he deserved more than her silence. The two of them, strangers until recently, had brought about the greatest act of violence in known history and she hadn't even given him the dubious moral protection of a spoken order. She bowed her head as he continued - she didn't recall the aftermath of the order, but she had never regretted _these_ lost moments.

She could feel his anger, his hatred building, and braced herself in turn. He may have the most self control of anyone she'd ever met, but holding all this inside couldn't be good for him. Perhaps now was when he'd let go of it, and move on.

He'd lost his nerve, his voice trailing off into silence although the anger lingered in his mind. Thinking about what he needed to move on, she brushed against his thoughts lightly, stirring the anger just a bit, hoping he wouldn't manage to muffle it again this time.

Thinking he might need a slightly more tangible nudge, she offered, "My decision haunts me too."

He shook his head. "Blame lies with me, for creating it. The situation forced your hand, anger forced mine."

Her jaw dropped, and she turned to stare at him, plans forgotten. "That's… Bao-Dur, you can't believe that. Don't you remember what I told you, before the battle?"

He nodded, eyes flicking her face and then back to his work. "You told me that my creation might be all that stood between us and total defeat. That if we used it, it would preserve our way of life, our civilization. I almost believed you, then, General. I suppose you did believe it at the time?"

"I did. I still do. Everyone knew that war would never be won in the traditional way; it would continue on until the Mandalorians had conquered every planet they could get their armored hands on. The rest of the galaxy would fight - mostly against them, some with them - and fight until there was nothing left. No winner, no loser. Just a long line of victims; dead and living, manadalorians and everyone else, all victims."

He turned back to face her now, his eyes flashing.

"And my solution was better how? There is still a huge casualty list; most of them are mandalorians, but I find less and less comfort in that as time wears on."

She shrugged slightly, her attention lapsing as they picked at old wounds; she missed how his anger was continuing to grow and find a new focus. "Anything was better than the ending Revan and the rest of the generals foresaw. That is why I gave the order."

"The order, the order! Is that all you think about? You ended the war with nothing more than a nod! I killed thousands of manadalorians in an instant with that device!"

Now his anger was spilling over, just as she'd hoped. Instead of letting it wash over her, though, she caught it, held it, and let it feed her own.

"The same thing! Ended the war - killed thousands - you talk like these were separate actions, but it's all the same thing! I wouldn't have ended the war without your creation; you wouldn't have killed anyone without my order! It's the same thing. You can't blame yourself and not hold me equally responsible."

For an instant, his hand clenched on the hydrospanner he held, and it looked like he was about to throw the tool across the room. Instead, he focused on his mechanical hand, and deliberately placed the tool back in it's place before looking at her.

For the first time, he gave her his full attention. The impact of his direct amber gaze was appalling; her breath caught, and she lost her train of thought. He didn't notice, as he was already speaking, his voice rising with every word until he was shouting.

"You did what needed to be done, General. You made a decision to save lives, even though it also ended them. My hands destroyed the mandalorians, I cannot be forgiven for that. I made my choices with only one goal in mind - ending the mandalorians. You have to see that, General. I can't just ignore the blood on my hands, and neither should you."

She pushed away from the scaffolding and glared at him, distantly pleased when he faltered in the face of her rarely displayed emotion.

"Why you… you stubborn… thick headed… little... tech!" She was spluttering, she was so angry. "Who are you to tell me what I should and should not see; what I should and should not ignore. Who put you in charge of assigning blame?"

Her breath was coming in angry pants, and she'd closed the distance between them without noticing. They stood toe to toe, and she had to look up slightly to meet his eyes. She folded her arms between them, and glowered at him.

His look of surprise was quickly fading into something else entirely, his amber eyes seeming to catch fire in the face of her unexpected verbal attack. He crossed his arms over his chest, the energy field of his prosthesis sending prickles up and down her arm where they brushed together, forcing her back a step at the surprising shock. His lip twisted when she glanced down at his arm.

He was about to answer, and later she would wish he had; would wish she had found out if this last volley was enough to make him forget, enough to make him call her something other than that respect filled, "General."

Before he had a chance to say anything, though, Atton and Mira ran into the garage, followed at a more decorous pace by Kreia. Atton was already speaking.

"What's all the yelling in here? What's going on?" His attention was all for the Exile, the accusation in his tone was completely for Bao-Dur.

Neither of them bothered to answer, still glaring at each other. Kreia's dry voice answered him instead. "A conversation, perhaps. Mature and thoughtful. Filled with all due respect for she who leads us, I'm sure."

Kreia left, letting her disapproval linger in the air. Mira laughed and walked out again, since no one had come to blows she quickly lost interest. Atton tried to glare daggers at Bao-Dur while escorting the Exile away as quickly as possible.

She let herself be led out, mostly because it was too embarrassing to remain at the scene of her lost control. She glanced over her shoulder once, though, and caught sight of Bao-Dur standing near the scaffolding.

He met her eyes, and shrugged. "Another time perhaps." A long beat. "General." That one word was loaded with meaning.

Irony, oh yes, as he reminded her of her rash words and their relative ranks. His tone made it clear that he didn't answer in kind only because of that rank. Anger too; she'd picked at his wounds as effectively as he had picked at hers, and he hated leaving the argument unfinished.

Underneath all that, there was a curious lightness to his voice, though. A hint of the true respect he held for her, even in anger. A sense that, perhaps, as the anger drained away, it wasn't just controlled and hidden, but truly released.

In the common room, she shook off Atton's hand, brushed off his indignant words on her behalf, waved away his offer to "speak with" Bao-Dur for her, and continued on to her quiet corner near the hyperdrive, there to meditate hopefully on the future.


	4. Chapter 4

Bao-Dur walked into the garage in the middle of the night watch, as usual. The little remote that hovered around him zoomed off to resume work, also as usual. Bao-Dur walked over to the workbench and leaned against it, surveying the room, which was most unusual.

The barest hint of a smile played on his lips as his eyes swept over the room. It seemed brighter, somehow, and for a moment he entertained himself with thoughts of his remote - or better, T3 - replacing the power sources for the overhead lights. That wasn't it, though, and he knew it. The new brightness was because yesterday, he'd found the General again.

Oh, he'd actually _found _her weeks ago, in the burning wreckage of her crashed shuttle, but that hadn't really been her. He hadn't needed her stumbling apology or the recording of her trial in front of the Jedi Council to know that something had happened to her following the final battle over Malachor; even though he had recognized her immediately when he looked down to see just who he had pulled out of that shuttle, she wasn't really the same person whom hundreds of soldiers had willingly followed into battle.

But yesterday she had stood in this same room, yelling - _yelling_ \- at him, throwing childish insults with her hands on her hips and fire in her eyes. She had always been bright, and she still was, but there was a difference ever since he'd rejoined her on Telos. Where before she had been bright and burning, now she was bright and cold. The fire had left her, and she kept her thoughts and feelings too well hidden. While it didn't detract from her brilliance or his desire to follow her, it had left him feeling as if something important had been lost.

At first, he thought it was because she was no longer a Jedi, and prompted her to create a new lightsaber for herself, hoping this would solve the problem. When it didn't help, he'd taken to replaying the recording T3 had stolen from Attris over and over again. Finally, he noticed that the missing element was also missing from her during her trial. After that, it was an easy jump to realize that whatever had happened over Malachor had created further reaching problems than they had expected. Somehow she was injured in that final battle, she had lost something; and if her loss was less obvious than the loss of his arm, so too was it less easily remedied.

Bao-Dur folded his arms carefully over his chest, avoiding the humming energy field of his prosthesis with an ease born of long practice. He had been plenty angry at her yesterday, but unlike the anger that he'd carried for so long, this was draining away easily; that was the true reason everything seemed brighter now. He had spent so long holding his anger and hatred tightly inside - never letting it go, clinging to it as if it were the only thing that kept him going - that he hadn't realized how it colored his perceptions. He was seeing the difference now though, and a small part of him hoped that it would continue.

He'd followed her from Telos without thinking twice about it, but as he stood in the garage of her badly damaged ship, Bao-Dur realized he was still trying to carry out her final order. Not the silent one that she'd given after a searching look in the middle of battle, but the one she didn't seem to remember giving.

As the pain and chaos swept through the fleet in the wake of the mass shadow generator powering on, the console he was standing next to had exploded - the pain that ripped through his left side was overwhelming, until it seemed he could feel the pain of everyone around him. She shot him a look, her own face twisted with pain and guilt, and reached out to him with one hand. He seemed to see a wavering light sweep outwards from her hand to wash over him, the pain subsided. As she fell, senseless, her voice seemed to echo weakly in his mind. "_Live, Bao-Dur." _It was the only thing that got him moving, that kept him moving to the lifepods, to the hospital ship, through all the surgeries, and on until this moment.

Pushing away from the workbench, he finally moved towards the scaffolding and resumed his work. He'd thought he was following that command all these years, but for the first time the new brightness showed him that maybe he hadn't been _living_, maybe he had simply been _not stopping. _If that were the case, he could certainly do better from now on.

Bao-Dur grinned to himself and with a silent salute in the direction of her quarters, he thought, "_Your command echoes still, General. And I obey, as I did at Malachor."_


	5. Chapter 5

She had apologized to Bao-Dur - again - early the morning after their argument. She had accepted his nod and return apology, tried to ignore the ironic tilt to his lips that might almost be a smile, and left the garage with every intention of avoiding him as completely as possible.

Since she was also determined to avoid Atton, Mira, and Visas (all three of whom had already tried to talk to her about her loss of control), she quickly found herself seeking out Kreia. Her mentor spared a single acidic comment on the display, before focusing on a lesson.

As she concentrated on listening to Kreia's voice droning instructions, she found her awareness expanding further outside of herself than she would have thought possible. The distractions nearly derailed her efforts a time or two, but Kreia kept her on track until she was able to hear the thoughts of her companions.

It was amazing, an experience that filled her with wonder, and a slight sense of guilt. She quickly pushed the emotions aside and tried to focus on what Kreia was telling her. It was extremely odd to hear her companions thoughts as clearly as if they stood in the same room speaking aloud, but there was a definite pattern to their thoughts, and similarity that was shattered when she finally picked Bao-Dur's mental voice out from the others. Before she could focus on that tantalizing information, Kreia interrupted her thoughts.

She would have been annoyed to be thrown out of her lesson so abruptly, and even more annoyed to have the puzzle she wanted to solve shoved out of her mind by Kreia's self satisfied tone. But what Kreia had to say made her forget her frustration. She was so intrigued by her mentor's revelation that she didn't even bother to argue with the patronizing explanation about why she wouldn't be able to hear Bao-Dur's thoughts. She could, and clearly, but obviously Kreia couldn't - and wasn't that interesting?

She listened a bit longer to Kreia's opinions, and managed to please her mentor enough that she got a few more drops of information out of her, before making her excuses and leaving. If nothing else, this exercise had at least convinced her that Kreia was fallible. Where Kreia took Atton's card counting shield as an insult of some sort, the Exile was fascinated, and decided it would be worth putting up with the usual minefield that was a conversation with him - and his awkward attempts at flirting - to see if he would teach her the trick.

She retreated to the hyper-drive alcove to ponder what she'd learned. It was difficult to decide if she was reading too much into Kreia's inability to read Bao-Dur's thoughts. It was possible that the woman's own prejudices prevented her from hearing his thoughts; it was even more possible that her own shared history with Bao-Dur allowed her to hear him.

Each member of her crew spoke, in their thoughts, to themselves. "_I wonder," "I walk," "I should."_ Even Atton, who kept his thoughts carefully shielded behind his card counting, was focused inward. She assumed all people did this - it made sense after all - until she heard Ba-Dur's voice. "_Your command echoes still, General."_ She could have been holding a conversation with him, as if they were in the same room talking, rather than on opposite sides of the ship and engaged in their own affairs. Even Mira, who had been thinking about her specifically, had done so while mostly focused on herself.

Why did he talk to her in his thoughts? Where everyone else's private thoughts reflected their own self interest, why did his thoughts include her? It was enticing, inviting. It was one of the most intimate things she'd ever heard.

Whatever the cause, the effect that the openness of his thoughts had on her was clear. As her thoughts turned over and around in her mind, they kept returning to him; every time they did, she felt slightly more grounded, slightly more stable. It was similar to the feeling she had when she woke next to the burning shuttle, only to be greeted with his dry voice calling her "General." He clearly wasn't holding a grudge about their recent argument, which was what gave the the courage to turn curiosity into action and walk into the garage.

As expected, he was working diligently. The Exile paused for a moment in the doorway, then made her way over to a stack of crates piled near the scaffolding where Bao-Dur was working. He didn't look up, but she knew he was aware of her as she made her way over to the crates and hopped up to sit comfortably on top of them.

She sat cross-legged in silence, keeping her Force enhanced senses open and focused on him; her relaxed posture a clear indication that she was staying. She enjoyed the opportunity to just watch him; the precision of his movements, and the expertise implied in his steady, unhesitating work. She watched the faint flickers of his sense as he wondered what she was up to, finally he seemed to decide that she wasn't leaving and wasn't looking for another shouting match. He clearly didn't know what to make of her silent presence, but since her only agenda was getting to know him better, she didn't push him.

When he took a deep breath, and launched into a bland progress report, she smiled faintly, and gave him her complete attention.


	6. Chapter 6

It was a good thing she was familiar with war, because General Surik was currently - willingly - walking through one of the most extensive minefields she'd ever encountered. Anyone with a fainter heart than hers would have backed out; anyone with less finesse would have triggered one of those mines and set the whole field off, with spectacular results.

Even with all the experience she had, this particular minefield was still proving to be a challenge. Most of the mines were hidden, without even a trigger pad to serve as warning to the unwary. The stakes were higher, too. She wouldn't be able to count on personal shields if the whole thing blew up, and she was far too committed to back out now.

She was surprised at how the connection between Bao-Dur and herself grew in the days they'd spent traveling to their next destination, and she was learning far more about him than she would have thought possible. He had excellent masks, and they rarely slipped, but she was gradually able to learn more in the moments that he hid his thoughts from her than she did when he was completely open.

He spoke frequently about his work on Telos, why he had joined the project and what it had been like working with the ithorians. He never mentioned the circumstances that led to him waging a one man war against Czerka Corp.

He would descend into self-recriminations about his role in the mandalorian wars; he never would tell her what he did immediately following the war.

He had willingly told her why he joined the war, but he wouldn't speak of his life before the war found him.

Sometimes he would answer direct questions, but if she touched on a subject he didn't care to discuss, he ignored the question as thoroughly as if she hadn't spoken at all. At first, she had found this annoying, but she didn't push him because their growing friendship was so new and fragile. Slowly, she came to see it as something to appreciate: he didn't get offended, and didn't lie or dance around a subject to avoid answering it. If he didn't want to answer, he didn't, and she knew to move on.

…...

Their relationship was still a minefield, though, and she should have kept that in mind. Minefields don't suddenly become safe just because you haven't triggered any, and assuming you knew the safe-zone was the worst mistake you could make.

He spoke passionately about his mechanical work on various ships, droids, and the little remote that followed him faithfully; but he never spoke about his prosthetic arm, even though she was fairly certain he had created it himself. She was feeling confident enough of their established patterns that she risked asking him what had happened to his arm.

She barely had a chance to register the flare of emotion - let alone decide what it had been - as it crossed his face before one of his masks dropped into place. His voice went low and venomous, with more than a bit of a snarl in it as he answered through clenched teeth.

"I got tired of it. Kept dropping my hydro-spanner. Figured I'd get a new one." There was a galaxy of bitterness in his tone.

She blinked, and stared at him in silence. A mental image of their personal minefield was crystal clear in that moment, with her unwary foot stepping squarely on a pressure pad. It was only now that she remembered that minefields are never safe; only now that she carried the metaphor to it's natural conclusion: minefields weren't random, they protected things. Her rather casual question had hit on a bottomless well of pain and insecurity.

Her eyes locked on his. His gaze was an infuriated glare, challenging her to reply; she kept her own gaze calm and steady, her eyes never leaving his as she hopped down from her crate. In silence, she walked over to him, only stopping when they stood toe to toe. He looked like he was trying to choose between a joke to diffuse the situation, and something so unforgivable that she would leave and never speak to him again. Before he could decide, she reached up and set her hands on his shoulders, her forefingers resting lightly on his neck above the collar of his shirt.

He jumped slightly at the contact - she'd touched him casually before, but never with this sort of deliberate intent - but when she just stood there, her hands steady on his shoulders and her eyes steady on his, he relaxed. He hadn't looked away from her, but his glare slowly softened into a more curious look.

When Meetra was sure that he wasn't about to storm out, she drew a quiet breath and deliberately started moving her hands slowly outwards.

Bao-Dur froze when he realized her intent, his breath caught in his throat and his muscles locked rigidly in place. She could feel his tension as her hands skimmed slowly across his shoulders, and started down the outsides of his arms.

She kept her touch firm and deliberate; not so light that he could imagine any hesitation, not so quickly that he might think she was simply appeasing him.

Her hands moved slowly over his upper arms and downwards, both hands moving at the same pace. She didn't pause or give any sign of recognition as she reached the metal cuff on his left arm. Bao-Dur opened his mouth, ready to tell her stop, but before he could summon the words, she had continued the slow glide of her hands down his forearms.

Her touch on his right arm didn't change, and he could tell by the change in the feedback from his prosthesis that she hadn't changed the pressure on his left arm either. She didn't speed up and didn't flinch, even though he knew from experience that the shocks and minor discharges from touching the powered section of his arm were uncomfortable bordering on painful. Her gaze never faltered from his; her expression remained open, never showing any sign of the disgust he had expected, nor any sign that she was hiding her emotions.

Finally, her hands reached the bottom of his forearms and drifted down to his hands. Once there, she twined her fingers through his - real and artificial alike. For another moment she stood still, a faint smile on her lips as she waited for him to process what had just occurred.

Slowly, Bao-Dur relaxed and drew a deep breath; when she gently squeezed his hands, he returned the pressure carefully - with both hands.

Meetra smiled at him and leaned up on her toes to place a light kiss on his cheek. She released his hands then, and left the garage without a word.

…..

Behind her, Bao-Dur stood rooted to the spot, his returning breath coming in harsh pants sounding like he'd been running for miles. As his thoughts chased themselves in circles, he made his way to the corner of the hold where he'd slung a hammock - eschewing the real beds in the assigned "men's barracks" in favor of privacy - and collapsed into it.

With his self-image so completely fractured, it took some time for his thoughts to settle into a new pattern. More than once, he held up his left arm to study the prosthetic hand, turning it from side to side and seeing it with new eyes. More than once, he reached across with his right hand to run his fingers lightly over the glowing power field where his left forearm had once been.

Instead of being repulsive, the shocks and tingles were simply different; the blue glow of energy wasn't disgusting and wrong, but perhaps a creative solution to an otherwise crippling injury.

Slowly, his breathing evened out, and he relaxed into the hammock, pushing one booted foot against the wall to set it swinging gently.

With his thoughts at least beginning to settle, he gave up on the self examination and allowed himself to entertain an idea that had never occurred to him before. As the hammock swung gently, he reached up and touched his cheek where the General had kissed him, a half smile curling his lips at the new possibility it suggested.


End file.
